Grace spent the night organizing all of her photographs. There were hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands. Pictures of her and Sam before they were married, a picture of the two of them dancing at a club in Juárez, a picture of her and Sam at Venice Beach. And hundreds of pictures of Sam and Mister, of her and Mister, of her and Sam and Mister. The photographs outlasted them.
The thought occurred to her that she’d always thought of herself in terms of her men—Sam’s wife, then Sam’s widow. And of course, she was Mister’s mother. Who was she now? She wasn’t the woman in the pictures. Whatever she had been, she was something else now. Someone else. A childless widow with breast cancer—she laughed to herself. To wind up like this, she who had spent her life telling other people that their job was to live.
She walked past Dr. Richard Garza’s receptionist without signing in. “Excuse me, but do you have an appointment?” Grace didn’t bother to turn around and address her. She just continued walking toward Richard’s office. She ran into him, face to face, in the hallway. “Grace?”
She could see condolences written all over his face—but she wasn’t in the mood this morning. She glared at him so he’d know she wasn’t here to be pitied or condescended to. It was as if she was grabbing him by the collar with that one look. She looked him straight in the eye. “You said it wasn’t too late. You said you had a plan.”
He looked at the stubborn woman standing in front of him, her hair uncombed and wild, her eyes red with tears, her face wounded. In that moment, he thought, she was as beautiful as she had ever been.